The 7800GT/GTX or GTX512MB score much higher than an X850XTPE, but it's so much cheaper for the X850XT I can get two of them, and run them in crossfire (ATi's answer to SLi) and have better performance.

And I won't really be paying anything for these cards, that's the reason I'm going with them.

As far as a new CPU/Mobo, Rick, why don't you go with a new Socket 939 Opteron, you can get the 144 or 146, they are San Diego cores (used in the AMD FX-57) and will EASILY clock to 2.8GHZ (for those not in the know, there really isn't any Intel chip that could touch an FX57 @ 2.8GHZ) and also some guys have gotten them up to 3.0GHZ on stock cooling.

www.infonec.ca will be getting them in stock soon. the 144's are only $165 and you can get a DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra-D for 159.99 bringing your mobo and CPU combo to only $326 leaving you a TON of money to spend on a new PCI-X card like the 7800GTX or X1800XT. And if you don't want to drop the money on the new video card, you could get an ASRock dual sata2 939 motherboard. It has socket 939 support, and AGP as well as PCI-X AND on top of that will support the new socket M2 when it comes out. It's a budget board, but has great overclocking potential, and is only $100CDN.

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Are you running the DFI MB now? Ive been looking at them, and wanting one. My cousin however is a firm believer in Gigabyte. Ive always ran asus, my cousin finds them "slow".
I was thinking of going with the following combo

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ socket 939 $350.00

DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR $244
or
Gigabyte K8NXP SLI $229


all prices sourced from tigerdirect mag.. but i purchase from Canada computers usually..

now, as for video i was planning on running the above mentioned card(s). But running the cheaper ATIs in crossover seems like a great idea..... hrmm....

Why opteron over athlon

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I've been wanting the LanParty board for a while now... It's supposed to be the ultimate for overclocking...

Anywho... Mark, that information about the Opteron is quite interesting... is the 144/146 Opteron basically an FX w/o the 64-bit part of the CPU?

And infonec.ca is the bomb.. been going to them for years now... They have the best prices in town, and are just around the corner from my work.

I personally don't do THAT much gaming.. but when I do I would like to take advantage of the graphics offered in the game. Mark what have you heard about the X1300? infonec offers that card in 512MB version for less then $200, but I'm guessing since the X800's are more $$$ that they're still better? I don't want to spend more then $400 on a video card.

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The DFI motherboards are better overclockers than the Gigabytes, they're features are more rich in terms of the bios, overclocking, ram tweaking etc. The gigabytes are good, I did an X2 3800+ on one and got up to 2.7 GHZ Prime Stable for a friend, but clocked it down to 2.5GHZ for daily cruising etc, it was paired with 256MB 7800GTX. Nice system, but I also built the same setup using a DFI NF4 Ultra D, got it up to 2.9GHZ prime stable, and it runs at 2.8GHZ all day.

With the Crossfire, you're pretty much limited to DFI, since they're the only ones using the RDX 200 crossfire chipset from ATI. It clocks higher than the NV chipsets in most scenerio's and can run all 4 DIMM slots at 1T timings. Something no NF4 board can do. Great board. The X850's in crossfire will score better than any single card out there. And If I'm not mistaken tigerdirect has a "buy one get the other for $199 deal" for X850's. And to give you an example the X1800XT is 779+tax CDN right now, and when we finally get the 7800GTX 512MB it will likely be over $900.

The Opteron is also 64 bit, it's an unreal processor and it's unbelievable that AMD could be so stupid to release a San Diego based processor for $165 CDN HAHAHA.

For the video card though, that X1300 is a budget card, it's very slow and doesn't run very fast. The 9800XT is more powerful. As much as I like NVidia, the 6800GS just came out, and it's faster than a 6800GT and overclocks much better. It's the "new" best budget Videocard. So go for that one if you want to play games like F.E.A.R it will rape it with AA and AF on @ 1280x1024. And those in SLi would be similar in performance to Crossfire X850's.

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